Childhood Secrets

In January 1906, Maria Montessori opened her first Casa del Bambini in Rome. Twelve years earlier she had been hooted and jeered there as the first woman ever to receive the University of Rome's M.D. In the 33 years since she began practicing her revolutionary theories of child education on the tough sons & daughters of tough tenement dwellers, she has seen those theories tried out in most parts of the civilized world, on the rich as well as the poor. Having spent most of her 70 years in expounding her methods to educators, last week Dottoressa Montessori published a book* designed to spread her doctrines to parents--especially the parents of children of pre-school age. Parents who read it will find that she knocks some accepted notions of child-raising into a very queerly-shaped hat.

An idealist as well as a practical educator, Maria Montessori believes that children have souls from the moment of birth; that they are born, not into a natural world, but into one that has been distorted by civilization; that when the secret of the child's soul is discovered the world's problems will be solved and we will have a race of self-confident, unrepressed men. Says she: "In the mind of the child we may perhaps find the key to progress, and, who knows, the beginning of a new civilization."

The child's soul, says Dottoressa Montessori, develops through a series of "sensitive periods"--times when it has a preternatural bent to learn such things as walking, talking. These periods must be recognized by parents; the child must be allowed to take utmost advantage of them. Babies of 1 1/2 years old, says she, can walk more than a mile if they are allowed to select their own pace. Other dicta:

> Children are sensitive to order. They want things in their right places, and in the same place all the time. They should be allowed to put things away and have the security of knowing they will find them where they were put.

> Children sleep too much--chiefly because their parents want them out of the way. "The patience, niceness and indeed submissiveness of upper-class mothers to the nurses they employ are really a tacit understanding that they will forgive anything, bear anything, so long as the disturbing child is kept away from his parents and from their possessions." Instead of sleeping in prison-like cribs, children should have free, low beds near the floor.

> Children should be allowed to dress and wash themselves, even though they cannot do it well or quickly. "The useless assistance given to the child is the first root of all repressions and hence the most perilous injury the adult individual can do to the child. . . . The adult must help the child, but help him in such a way that he may act for himself."

> "Naughtiness is the expression of an inner disturbance, an unsatisfied need, a state of tension; the child's soul is crying out for what it needs, seeking to defend itself."

*THE SECRET OF CHILDHOOD--Stokes ($2.50).

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